A Plan Gone Awry
by Hello Kathryne
Summary: Arnold Pearlstein was not prepared for this moment. Phoebe was all too willing to help him when he needed it. A/OC, A/P
1. Chapter 1

Dorothy Ann smiled. "Calm down," she said, standing in such close proximity to her redheaded friend, she was sure they looked like a couple. She tugged on his tie, closing the loop into a nice little bow. Arnold swore that the petite girl in front of him would be the first and last person he would ever know who could tie a bowtie with such fluidity.

She spread down a wrinkle in his shirt. She looked up at him again, stepping back. "Wonderful. You'll knock her dead, Perlstein." Another girl steps up from behind him, grabbing his cuffed hand and pulls him around so he's facing her. "Why, if I didn't know better," she grabbed his glasses from his face, her reach much better than the blondes, "I'd think my cousin was actually a decent looking guy." He grumbles, even though he knows it's supposed to be a compliment, and the closest he'd get from Janet.

She hands him a contact case, but he takes the glasses back. He says that she likes him with his glasses.

Dorothy Ann agreed. She did like his glasses, she had mentioned it before.

Janet presses something into his hand, teasing about how he'd be screwed if he forgot that. Dorothy Ann, suddenly concious of the time, shooed him out the door, following soon after to get in her own car. (She had sworn to her neighbor that she'd only be gone for thirty minutes. It was nearing an hour now.)

Arnold Perlstein, for all his preperation, for all the planning, could only feel a sense of dread.

He drove to the restaurant, meeting his current girlfriend of a year, a slim, short blonde. Dinner was lovely, they had excellent conversation. After dessert he stood, only to kneel on the ground seconds later. With a tear-stained face, she covered her mouth and shook, shaking her head the wrong way, accompanied with the wrong answer.

No.

No.

No.

He felt shocked, betrayed. He stood silently, paid the check and left. He drove for what felt like a few hours, but judging by the clock-radio, it was only thirty minutes. He stopped at a familliar brick structure, parking in the driveway even though it made her insane, considering she parked in the garage, and made his way to the door. He rang the doorbell five, six, seven times in rapid succession.

She opened the door, groggily, obviously in the midst of a nap. Her brown hair stuck up in strange angles, she looked surprised. Her best friend, decked out in what looked like a tuxedo and the most miserable expression she had ever seen.

"She said no, Pheebs. She said no." His voice cracked and she ushed him inside.

She wasn't going to chide him on her, how she knew she was bad, how he could do so much better. She was going to get him the set of clothes he had left in case he ever needed them (two sets, a pair of day clothes and a set of pajamas she had bought him one year for Christmas but he seemed to forget to take home,) and let him be miserable.

She was going to do what a true friend would do.

He was going to forget about the year he had wasted.

They fell asleep on the couch, both slightly miserable.

A/N: This felt longer.

Poll-- should I continue this? Y/N?


	2. Chapter 2

She awoke with a start. Never a good sign. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she craned her neck, stiff from falling asleep on the couch, over the arm rest. Arnold, in a pair of absolutely horrible red and yellow plaid pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt substituting the matching top, (why had she gotten him those pajamas? They were awful,) was sprawled out on the floor, one foot lazily tossed on the couch near her ankle.

She, in her all limbs, no torso splendor, must have flailed him off the couch. Untangling her legs from the knitted blanket that usually adorned the back of her couch, (something that Dorothy Ann swore was a "grandma thing",) she pulled herself up, stepped over her sleeping friend, and strode into the kitchen.

Her dog, a stocky cocker spaniel, opened one eye to get a look at her, and then closed it, nestling his head back into the dog bed. (The reason for the cold shoulder? If Phoebe wasn't on the bed, Joey wasn't allowed on it. So, when she fell asleep on the couch, he lost warm, cozy bed privilliages.)

She scrounged around in her fridge. Despite the fact that she lived alone and rarely had people leeching her food, her fridge was scarce. Pulling out the two remaining eggs and an unopened bag of shredded cheese. (Mild chedder.) Stirring the eggs and cheese into an unappetizing goop, she poured them into a pan and turned on the heat. Now, where was that spatula?

Arnold woke to the sound of sizzling, the smell of burning, and the barking of an excited dog who expected burnt eggs sometime soon. It took him a minute to register where he was, and who was in the kitchen.

Strange, Phoebe _never_ burnt food.

Groggily getting to his feet, he wandered into the kitchen. Her face was red, a hand on her temple as she crouched to dump the less burnt eggs in Joey's bowl, and the other half in the trashcan. He attempted to step back, to make it look like he hadn't seen this little moment, but she caught the moment in the corner of her eye.

"Oh." She felt the tears pricking at her eyes. "You're up. I tried making breakfast. I got.. distracted, though." She flushed, half from anger, half from embarrassment.

_Why did he look so cute when he was miserable, giving her a pitying look, and with the impression of her carpet on his face when it took so much effort for everyone else?_

She was suddenly concious of her own dishevled state. She attempted to shake it off. He was her best _friend._

One who was attracted to hopelessly beautiful women.

A category she did not fit.

"Uh. I'm going to take a shower. Then we can run out and get you something to eat.. if you wanted something to eat. "

He shook his head. "I figure I'll just run home. Sorry about freeloading."

"Oh, no!" She interjected. "Don't worry, it wasn't a problem."

He looked sheepish, rubbing the back of his head. "I'm going to borrow these." He motioned at his outfit.

"..Yeah. Call me if you want to sleep on my couch again."

"Oh, don't worry. I will." He grabbed his suit from the night before and draped it over his arm, forcing himself to smile a bit.

He looked tired, she noticed.

Starting towards the door, he uttered, "Thanks, Pheebs," before pushing his way out and going towards his car.

She fell back on the couch and sighed.

His life just went through a rough patch.

Why was she the one who was driving herself insane?


	3. Chapter 3

Arnold had pulled over a mere three miles from her house.

His phone wouldn't stop chiming. Someone was certainly text message happy.

Flipping open the thin device, he found the majority were from DA.

Things like:

"How did it go?"

and a few playfully sporting the message:

"When's the wedding?"

This one was easily the most discouraging:

"How did she look when you asked?"

He promptly deleted all of them until he got to the last one.

It was from her. The leggy blonde who had caused this sudden spiral.

"arny--"

He smirked in spite of himself. She never used caps. Not in emails, texts and rarely in handwritten notes.

"please do not think that my answer was because i do not love you."

The grammar was hard to comprehend. She didn't like contractions, either.

"please come home, arny. i love you more than you can imagine."

The line broke and it was signed.

"--c."

Then under it, it said the sender's information and phone number. Just like it did with every text message he recieved.

He hit a sequence of numbers, the seven digit combination as engraved into his mind as his locker combination from eleventh grade, (23-13-13,) he didn't even have to look at the number pad.

"Hello?" The voice on the other end asked. It sounded stopped up, as if it had been crying.

"Cecelia?" He asked in return. From what he saw, she never cried.

"Arnold? Where are you?" She asked, a hint of desperity in her voice. He was gone for a day and it had seemed as if her life had been destroyed.

"On my way home. I stayed with a friend for the night."

She didn't ask who. She didn't want to be disappointed with his answer. "Will you ask me again?"

He froze. "Ask what?"

"The question. Right now. Will you ask me again?"

He sucked in a breathe. "Over the phone?"

"...I suppose not. Come home and ask me. Please." She had been thinking about it all night, a list of pros and cons and feelings all jumbled up.

"Okay. I'll be home soon."

They hung up at the same time, without saying goodbye.

He drove home, circling the block twice before parking in the driveway.

Striding up to the door, he had almost gotten his hand around the handle when the door was flung open and Cecelia, dressed in nothing but one of his shirts and a pair of shorts, looking absolutely furious and horrible and depressed at the same time crushed her lips to his.

She mumbled "ask me again, right now" into his mouth.

They stepped inside and he kneeled down, grabbing the ring box from his suit jacket-pocket.

She nodded ferociously and held out her hand.

He slipped the ring on her finger and they kissed again.

He sent DA a text later.

"Wedding'll be in the fall."

He called Phoebe.

"Arnold?" She asked, apparently having looked at the caller ID.

"Yeah. Guess what?" He said, happily. Happier than she had heard him in the past few months.

He paused. "'Celia said yes. I asked her again, in my pajamas in the living room."

"Oh." She sounded surprised and... jealous? "That's wonderful."

"I was wondering, will you be the Maid of Honor? We talked about this, Cecelia and I, I mean."

She felt her throat constrict. The man she had loved since that first day in the third grade was asking her to be a main point in his wedding to a woman she swore he could do better than.

She forced herself to sound excited.

"Really? I'd love to!"

He smiled. "That's how I expected my favorite girl to answer. I'll talk to you later." Click.

Phoebe mused to herself.

So that's how it turns out.

Time to move on.

Joey wimpered besides her as she slammed the phone back on the reciever.

----

End.

----

So. That ended differently than expected.

Oh well. Review, s'il veux plait.


End file.
